Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Marine Review (Cleveland, OH), 10 Apr 1902, p. 24

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#4 MARINE REVIEW. [April 10 RECENT SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS AND THE FUTURE OF NAVAL WARFARE.* BY WILLIAM LAIRD CLOWES. At a time like the present, which is one of extremely rapid scientific progress, it is especially incumbent upon us not to neglect, even for a single unnecessary day, any device which may possibly enable us, either in peace or in war, to defeat our rivals by honorable means. Scientific dis- covery tends ever more and more to obliterate the significance of those physical and moral differences which anciently rendered one race superior to another; and brain and thought are already more potent factors in the world than mere muscles and animal courage.. Moreover, we know from experience that today or tomorrow may produce a complete revolution ol method in almost any of our processes. We ought, therefore, never to sleep, save, as it were, with our ears and eyes open. Yet, strange to say, the.amount of practical attention which we give to new machinery and appliances is often, I am afraid, inversely proportionate to the novelty and ingenuity of the device in question. We are too prone, when examining new inventions, to admire the cleverness displayed in them, and then to reject them, wholly and finally, for one of two reasons, both of which are in reality quite inadequate. One reason frequently alleged is that the invention has yet to be brought to absolute perfection, and that, pending its complete evolution, we may safely neglect it. The other reason is that the machinery or ap- paratus is too delicate or complicated for use by the class of workmen who are accustomed to handle the appliances which the new. apparatus would supersede. The evils resulting from such an attitude, which is character- istically a national one, are twofold. On the one hand, we snub and starve the inventor, and possibly drive him elsewhere in disgust; on the other, we make the far more dangerous mistake of assuming that the tide of technical education will not rise elsewhere so long as we choose to batten it down in our own little hold. What we ought to do is, surely, in the one case to take up promising inventions, and, turning them over for develop- ment to the brightest intellects at our command, to enjoy the exclusive profits of them as soon as they shall be practically perfect; and, in the other, to educate our men up to the point of being able to use delicate and complicated appliances, instead of rejecting the appliances because our existing men are incapable of handling them. It is absurd for us to say, as in practice we do, "Don't offer us any unfamiliar novelty that isn't approximately perfected; and, above all, don't offer us any perfected nov- elty that isn't approximately familiar.'"" While we continue to follow that policy we run the risk of falling out of station with the rest of the world, and of not discovering our error of position until.too late. It is mainly with the object of appealing for readier official interest in certain recent inventions and for a greater official anxiety to educate the workman up to the level of the tools already available, or about to become available, to his hand, that I venture to address you on "Some Recent Scientific Developments and the Future of Naval Warfare." These developments must inevitably influence naval warfare strategically as well as tactically, and it is hard to say in which direction the effects are likely to be more important: ~~ : Within the compass of little more than a lifetime the practice of naval' strategy has already been revolutionized by the introduction of steam and the electric telegraph. The principle of strategy, however, has suffered no change. It is very simple, and it may still, as in the days of Nelson, be thus formulated: To have at the right spot, and at the right moment, a fighting force superior in personnel, as well as in material, to the force of the enemy at the same time and place. But the practice is still changing rapidly, and, under the influences of recent invention, it must change still more. We have not yet realized to the full the strategical value of speed as a factor in the successful carrying out of the fundamental object of strategy. Speed, in the present, is all that, and more than, the weather gauge was in the past; and, if we neglect it, we shall cripple the hands of our admirals, no matter how many ships and men we may place at their disposal. It is the soul of all effective combination for offence; and I am not sure that it is not equally valuable as a means of defence against cer- tain weapons which at present cannot easily be otherwise avoided--to-wit, submarines. The submarine, of which more anon, is essentially a slow craft, whether she travel on the surface or below it. A large ship can have no more secure protection against the submarine than the fact that she is in very rapid motion. A submarine must come to the surface to look about her; and if her big enemy be seen to be changing position rapidly, the submarine can gather little information that is likely to be of use to her. And here I should like to: say that our own preparations for attacking sub- marines with spar torpedoes. fitted to torpedo boats or destroyers, are ex- citing the ridicule of those foreign nations, which, from experience with them, know what submarines are like. We claim that our specially rigged spar torpedo can reach a submarine at a depth of 10 ft. below the surface. Com'dr W. W. Kimball, U. S. N., says, justly: "Why a submarine should run at 10 ft. instead of 30 ft. or 40 ft. does not appear; nor does it appear how the destroyer could, when the submarine showed for a few seconds, head for her, and strike her with the spar torpedo before she attained a safe depth. While the battleship, protected by the destroyer, is the proper quarry of the submarine, there seems to be no law against sinking the de- stroyer in passing, if her presence were inconvenient." The truth seems to be that, if the submarine can be reached at all by the spar torpedo, she can--at least in the vast majority of cases--be reached much more expe- ditiously and certainly by means of the gun; though it may be desirable to mount guns in a special manner in order to deal with her. -. The offensive usefulness of speed has, I believe, been doubled or trebled by recent improvements in wireless telegraphy. It looks as if every ship, large or small, in future naval warfare micht be, as it were. the mobile terminus of an unlimited number of erial cables communicating not only with the base on shore, but also with all friendly ships within a radius of several hundreds of miles. It is true that last year, when wireless telegraphy was employed by one side during the naval maneuvers. the svys- tem broke down by the reason that the rival commander was able to tap the messages, and did not use wireless telegraphy himself. But the break- down on that occasion was due, entirely to the manner in which wireless teleeraphy was misused. The defeated commander might either have em- be = "paper fead-at-annuat-meeting of. Institution--ef Naval-Architects, ____ ployed a code for the sending of his message, or have used some variety of wireless telegraphy which was not tapable. It is merely a question, on the one hand, of a special cypher, or, on the other, of special discharge terminals, coherers, and relays. The possible variety is infinite; and it is hardly conceivable that in war time the cypher of one side should be known to the other, or that both sides should use exactly similar instry- ments, similarly, "attuned." Given a good and untapable system of wireless telegraphy, utilizable over long distances at sea, naval strategy, barring accidents, must rapidly become almost an exact science. But it is desirable to have in reserve some alternative to the lofty spars which at present seem to be favored by Mr. Marconi. They cannot be carried by any vessel in very heavy weather; and they cannot be carried by a small craft, such as a torpedo boat or a steam launch, in any weather. It ought to be possible to substitute for them, when necessary, kites, such as, I believe, were suc- cessfully used by Gen. Baden-Powell at Mafeking. These have much greater radial "command" than can be given to spars on board ship, and they can be flown by craft of all sizes. Electrical kite-flying, and wireless telegraphy by that means, should be part of the ordinary routine of every ship ot war. Nor must it be forgotten that there is yet much to be learned with regard to kites, especially kites large enough to carry with them a small motor controllable from below. : We have seen in South Africa that, assuming good intelligence to be at the disposal of a beligerent, the essence of effective practical strategy is extreme mobility--extreme speed, that is. I rejoice, therefore, though it is 'perhaps hardly even a straw to show which way the wind blows, that the admiralty has decided to continue its experiments with turbine propellers in destroyers, and also to apply the turbine principle of propulsion to one comparatively large vessel, a third-class cruiser. I trust, too, that White- hall has already devoted its attention to Mr. J. T. Marshall's new valve gear, for there can be no doubt that we must witness, within the next few years, an enormous increase in the speed of large fighting ships; and, then, woe betide the power which lags behind its rivals in the matter of rapid mobility. It will see itself condemned to forego strategy altogether in its naval combinations--in other words, it will find itself confined to the local defensive. As regards tactical factors, what I have said as to our habitual atti- tude to new inventions applies more perhaps to them than to strategical factors. Take, for example, the question of range-finding in action at sea. I was once in one of his majesty's ships in which a set of range-finding instruments was fitted experimentally. The appliances were rejected with- out undergoing a really fair trial. They were tried superficially by people who knew next to nothing about them; and they were condemned, not, so far as I could ascertain, because they were ineffective, but because they were complicated, and could not, of course, be worked easily by the un- trained intelligence which was available to handle them. Surely it would have been better to adopt the invention, which had been well tried abroad, or some superior one, and to train the necessary intelligence. In the meantime, how does our navy hope to find the range in action? It depends mainly upon being -able to note the drop of tentative shots. Where two single ships are engaged, this method, though slow and unscientific, may possibly work; but when whole fleets are engaged, how can any human eye feel certain whence comes the particular shot the drop of which is noted? At Santiago it was found impossible to form any correct conclu- sions in that way. Now there are many excellent and almost perfect range- finders. I will mention only the Barr and Stroud, which is said to be re- sponsible for the recent excellent shooting of the Terrible, and the Zeiss stereoscopic, each of which reduces the possibility of error to a minimum, though there are others almost equally good. For years we have been flirting with such inventions; for years we have refrained trom taking them to our arms, because of our fear that we do not sufficiently understand them. They ought to have been long ago in all our fighting ships. By this time we should then have learned to understand them. Other nations have adopted them. What will happen if we fall into a conflict with one of those other nations? Naval gunnery will also be greatly improved so soon as two or three comparatively small problems which are now awaiting solution shall have been solved. Their solution ought not to be long delayed, if only the right kind of intellects can be-persuaded to turn their attention to them. The great want of the day is, of course, an arrangement whereby it shall be possible to fire a projectile through moderately thick modern armor, an to burst it immediately in rear. Another great want is some new method of igniting smokeless powders. These powders, especially when fired in relatively small guns, are, as their name implies, practically smokeless. But at present the most convenient method of igniting them is found to be through the medium of an ignition charge of black powder of the old smoky kind. In small weapons the ignition charge, and the quantity of smoke produced by it, are insignificant; but in the case of heavy guns the ignition charge alone comprises about as much black powder as formerly would have sufficed for a couple of full charges.for the old 64-pounder muzzle-loader; and, the volume of smoke thus produced being very consid- erable, the advantages of employing smokeless powder are to a large ex- tent neutralized. _ A very noteworthy development of recent science, and one that cannot fail to greatly influence the tactics of future naval warfare, is the modern submarine. I am not a submarine enthusiast; but it is impossible not to recognize that the extension of the open field of naval operations from a space of two dimensions only to one of three is too significant to be lightly regarded. The best existing submarine is very slow, very blind, of limited radius of action, and very liable to accident; but it is vain utterly to deny the value--especially the moral value--of a craft which, without leaving your immediate vicinity, can move altogether out of your sphere 0 activity, and still, perhaps, deal you a fatal injury. It seems to me that the submarine, even if it be carried no further than at present, means the doom of the old-fashioned blockade. But I am sure that the submarine will be -- carried very much further than at present, and that already we may see 'traced out before us the lines along which it is destined to develop. The 'weakest points of the best existing sttbmarines are: That they cannot see clearly unless fhey come to the surface to-do so: that they cannot be sure Obry of maintaining a given course under -water, even by utilizing-the OD

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